


Fractures

by idkmanokay



Category: Red Queen - Victoria Aveyard
Genre: Angst, Badass Ladies, Canon-Typical Violence, Dark, I'll add more when i know more, Pining, Sexual Content, Violence, also i love tyton, calmare, dark and twisty at times, evangeline and mare are ultimate fighters together, fixing the epilogue, hello this is adult maven now, just gals being pals and fucking shit up, lowkey dark au no one asked for but I wrote anyway, lowkey mare/tyton if you squint, mare blows shit up, marecal, obsession never ends well, post king's cage, so expect him, we all know what I'm taking about
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-03-27
Updated: 2018-05-22
Packaged: 2018-10-11 13:44:45
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 9,041
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10466373
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/idkmanokay/pseuds/idkmanokay
Summary: He is the sun.I am the storm.I may not be enough for him, but I can destroy his world with a brush of my hand.(post King's Cage)





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> based on the song "Fractures" by Illenium ft Nevve  
> (1111/10 would recommend listening to while reading it makes so much sense as mare X cal song)

He is the sun.

To them, he burns, bright and righteous and true.

He is warmth and leadership and he is too much for me. Too proud, too strong, too much like them.

The crown on his head winks and flashes and screams his place to the world.

I am the storm.

To them, I am a symbol, power and sparks and rage. Too proud, too powerful, too much a liability.

I am cold and vengeance and I am not enough for him.

The blood in my veins pounds and pulses and announces my inadequacy to those who dare to listen. My red blood sings with rage and bitterness.

I may not be enough for him, but I can destroy his world with a brush of my hand.

(I try not to think about the way his hand would brush the traces of my spine, fire made flesh.) 

I watch the way his bronze eyes focus so singlehandedly on the task at hand, the words from his mouth honest and simple and kingly.

He was the fire prince, and now he is the burning king, and I am so much more than the little lightning girl.

 "I thought you said you could handle this," Farley hisses to me, boot kicking my leg. Her kick isn’t gentle, and I’m brought back from my smoky thoughts to my reality; I’m in a war council meeting, and I’m supposed to be making no noise, and pretending I don’t exist if I want to stay where I am.

"I am handling this," I reply, as if there aren't purple sparks soaring to life on my fingers, dying just as fast. 

Farley snorts, cracking her knuckles as if the entirety of the war council isn't colluding important violent things in front of us. Her father looks over, one good eye severe, but it doesn’t stop her. If anything, she thrives on the silent criticism.

"You're not handling this well. Let's go, I don't want to have to explain to anyone that every lightbulb in this place no longer works because you can't get a handle on your feelings," she says, pushing herself off the wall where we'd been leaning against. She didn’t have to blend in with a wall to stop herself from doing something she’d regret, but she’d stayed on the fringes with me anyway. With the confidence of someone who knows no one is going to try to stop her, she saunters from the room. 

Head down, trying desperately not to draw attention to myself, I follow her out, ignoring the way the conversation dies out as Farley and I exit, talk of money and supplies and troops coming to a rapid halt.

His eyes burn into my frame, and I don't need to look over to see the bronze gaze burning me up. I can feel the exact second he lets himself look at me. The heat in the room rises, and I can't make my escape fast enough. Every second his attention is focused on me is another second I'm ripped apart by our decisions, and stitched back together by anger and betrayal and electricity. The heat of his eyes is enough to make my back burn with forgotten blisters, my body mourn for long gone touches, and my fists clench with angry energy. Something smells like burning plastic, and everyone there is reminded of how hurt he truly burns.

(I won't think about the way sheets used to burn up between us, the way his fire scared my nightmares away. I'll think of his words, cold as ice, and the way he looked walking away from me.)

The wall separating us comes both too quick, and not quick enough. I still feel his surprise, hurt, anger, want.

I know, because I feel it too.

I don’t look back, because he did this.

Farley is waiting for me outside the room, tapping her foot like I was hours behind her instead of steps.

“I had a handle on my feelings. Well, most of them anyway. Still learning to handle anger,” I grin up at Farley, sparks down my body.

"You need something to do, somewhere that is not here," She decides, ignoring my poor attempt to regain some dignity at being taken from the room like a child, light footsteps taking her down the hall.

I follow her, because that's what I do.

"Oh, does that mean I actually get to leave now?" I’ve been stuck here while the kings and premiers and the princes and the generals make decisions, and all I want is to let myself loose, to destroy, to feel lightning cleave rock and flesh.

"I can't have you making lights flash and Cal accidentally burning handprints into tables just because you two can't handle your teenage angst. If sending you off somewhere to burn off the energy you used to burn off with him-"

"General Farley-" I spit out between clenched teeth, hyper aware of the wires snaking through the ceiling about our heads, taking electricity back into the room we just left, where he is waiting. 

"Mare Barrow," Farley imitates, "don't complain when I'm giving you full rein to light shit up."

That perks me right up.

Destruction always does.

"What?"

We enter the bright sunlight of Piedmont. It sets Farley's shorn hair on fire, sunlight glinting off the blonde locks. At once, she looks both more severe and more beautiful, scar in sharp relief on her face.

I have to turn my eyes away. Too much is fire in my head. I need to cleanse myself. He made his choice, and so did I. Now, I need to live with it, to cleanse the fire with the lightning.

"I get that you're upset, but you need to get over it. Everyone has something they have to get over. He is just another thing in your past to make you stronger. You're stronger than a failed relationship. Pull your shit together," Farley's words are harsh and sharp. It's everything I need.

"I am angry, General Farley. I am beyond feelings now. Consider my shit together.”

“This isn’t a game. I want you at your best. Can you handle playing with the adults now or are you still stuck in your teenage angst?”

“I got this. I’m fine,” I say clearly.

(I’m not lying if fine covers having your heart broken and the pieces turn to shrapnel inside you, feeling anger define you with every breath you take, and wanting nothing more than to watch the world burn at your feet.)

Farley's hand wraps around my arm, squeezing with a strength no one else would dare. Sparks dance up from my hand, but fizzle out before they reach her fingers. Still, her short hair stands on end, but she makes no indication she feels it.

"Do you got it, Mare? I'm about to send you into an active war zone, and your teenage angst has no place there. I can't believe I'm saying this, but I'm trusting you. Don't fuck this up," Farley's voice could cut glass.

"Yes, General, I got it," I say, with more confidence and strength than I've had since that disastrous day when everything went down. 

She gives me a long, measured look. I wonder what I look like to her- I know I'm stronger and leaner than I used to be, hair more grey than brown. Do my eyes say what I can't? That I am not who I am supposed to be? Not yet, not anymore.

"Fine. I'm sending you to the Lakelands. Light it up.”

I smile. It feels crooked and meaner than it once was.

"With pleasure."

**

 I settle into the small air jet with a sense of the relief. I need an outlet, a place to let all this ridiculous feeling out. I don't want to feel his absence like a missing limb because he was always my pilot. I want to be the storm, to feel every bit of electricity until that's all I am. Sparks dance down my suit, the purple stark against the tight fitting black. The electricity of the small air jet hums against my back, getting stronger. The ramp starts to close, electricity flowing towards the engines. We’re about to take off, off to somewhere I can let my electricity define me.

I'm going to electrocute the fire prince right out of me.

"That look on your face makes me want to hit it off," a sly voice intones, so close and unexpected that the air jet jolts with me.

Eyes I hadn't even realized had closed open, staring at the slim figure now strapping herself in next to me as nonchalantly if she hadn’t just snuck past me right as the doors were sealing.

"I would think the future queen of Norta would be too important to send to a small mission in the Lakelands," I try not to let surprise, or any other unwanted feeling, like jealousy, color my voice.

Judging by the way Evangeline raises her eyebrows, I don't succeed. 

"Even I need to blow off steam," she mutters, metal armor readjusting itself into something she likes better. It's matte black today, almost like she's trying not to draw attention to herself. Her silvery hair is bound up carefully in an intricate array of braids, leaving her flashing eyes free to drill into me. Only Evangeline would see a mission for the Scarlet Guard as a way to blow off steam.

"Does your father know you're here?"

"No, and neither does Calore, because I know that's what you're really asking about. I need to get out, and this was the first mission available. And you're here, and I'll take any chance to show you up," Evangeline has the poise of someone made for royalty. But I see the strain in her brows, the minute tightening of her harness.

I wish I could hate her more.

"One day, we're going to have a real fight, and we'll see who shows who up," I say, because if I say anything else it'll send both of us over our own personal cliffs. The humming of the jet as it peels down the runway is calming, keeping me grounded to where I need to be.

"Looking forward to it. Who else is coming on this trip?" Evangeline appears relaxed in her seat. She's always been better at this charade than I have. 

"You’re not supposed to be here, are you?” Everything clicks into place at once.

“Not technically, but who’s going to stop me? Besides, I’m already here, and you could use all the help you could get,” Evangeline says impetuously, throwing her head back with an arrogance only she could pull off.

I can’t help a small laugh. “You don’t even know where we’re going.”

“Somewhere I can wreck shit, I’m hoping.”

“We’re going to the Lakelands. A lord there built a prison to keep Red prisoners. He’s already executed the few prisoners he had. He’s out on a vacation to find more right now.  I’m going there to destroy it.”

Evangeline is too good to let me see the emotions beneath her face, but there’s no hiding the way her armor shifts and her fists clench beneath gloves studded with iron. The irony isn’t lost on me, or her. Her control isn’t as ironclad as she wants everyone to think.

It almost humanizes her.

She recovers fast. “Well, you’ll probably mess it up somehow. I’ll be there to fix it when you do.”

“Sure, Evangeline.”

“Who knows? Maybe it’s one of Iris’ relatives,” Evangeline’s grin is just as sharp as the knives sticking out of her boot.

I sigh, leaning further back into my seat as the jet climbs into the air, rougher than I’m used to.

(If I could electrocute the voice in my head that reminds me that Cal could keep it steadier, I would.)

“Why are you really here?” I ask, almost afraid of the answer.

“I needed to get away. From my father, from my mother, from the Guard, from _him_ ,” Evangeline answers me, her voice lacking her usual venom, almost startling in its honesty. Big dark eyes framed by pale lashes blink at me, begging me to understand in a way I haven’t seen since she begged for her brother’s life.

She’s just as angry as I am. It pulses through her, through me, and it’s infecting us both. In that moment, I feel her pain, and she feels mine.

I never thought I would say it, but Evangeline Samos and I understand each other in this moment.

I let a smile spread across my face. It’s not pretty, or nice. A matching one spreads across her face, sharp and deadly.  It’s a smile for the destruction we’re about to rain down on our enemies.

“We’re going to destroy them, Little Lightning Girl.”


	2. Chapter 2

The grass is plush and soft beneath my feet, the breeze just cold enough to make me glad for the protective layer of my suit clinging to me like a second skin. There’s no pollution out here, only clean and pure air. I breathe in great lungful, pretending like the chilly air is enough to cleanse me of the rest of my sins.

“Why did they drop us off in the middle of nowhere?” Evangeline doesn’t look impressed with the towering pines and thick underbrush surrounding us.

“If you had bothered to learn anything about the mission you were going to stow away on, you’d know that there’s a cliff overlooking the prison about a quarter mile north of here. The prison is in a bowl shaped valley, hidden by hills and forests. Through the woods, there’s an overlook. Better vantage point, but inaccessible by air jet,” I try not to let my smugness at knowing something she doesn’t seep into my voice. Her scowl tells me how terribly I failed.

In order to avoid a needle to the brain, I start walking towards our goal, branches cracking under my boots. There’s nothing out here but the scent of the pines, the breeze, freedom, and power. Grumbling, Evangeline follows, steps as light as feather.

“Could you be a little quieter?” She huffs out, following me towards the place where we can finally just let go and be the worst versions of ourselves with no consequences.

“I’m a thief, Evangeline, of course I could be quieter. Don’t want to, though,” I say loftily, cracking another branch under the thick sole of my boot, just because I can. The resounding split it makes under my weight is so satisfying, I do it to another small branch. A small smile creeps over my face. I’m hundreds of miles away from Piedmont, walking through the woods to blow up a fascist Silver lords prison for people with red blood, and I can let the lightning flow. Here, there aren’t any chains holding me down, no person with a stranglehold on my heart. I can be as loud and as destructive and as vindictive as I want. There’s no one here who will stop me. Only Evangeline Samos, queen bitch of Norta, who will only encourage my temper tantrum. Maybe even have one of her own.

“You’re going to get us killed,” Evangeline hisses between her perfect white teeth.

“No, I’m not. There’s no one around here for miles,” I say, freedom making my voice loud. Arrogant. Stupid.

“A lord left no one behind? No guards at the castle? No Red servants to scrub the blood off the tiles?”

“Intelligence says its abandoned. Scouts have been here for weeks. 11 Red prisoners executed last week, abandoned this week. They say the lord was scared of the Scarlet Guard’s retaliation. For good reason,” I hold up my hands for emphasis, purple lightning weaving a glowing web between my fingers.

“No Nortan Silver lord would leave his home so unprotected. I don’t think Lakelander lords would dare be so stupid either. Did they tell you what this lord’s ability was?” Evangeline’s voice sounds harsher than it did when she was berating me for being loud. I don’t turn to look at her, don’t want to see whatever look is on her face. A creeping coldness makes its way up my fingers.

(I tell myself that I don’t wish for an overly hot body next to me, alight with flame and warmth.)

“Swift,” I answer easily, ducking under a branch. I can see the light from the edge of the forest now, filtering through the thick brush of the trees. To that light, to the cliff overlooking the valley, to a place where my lightning had a home and target outside my own searing veins.

We’re close. I can feel the power coursing through my veins, the distant hum of the prison, kept warm and lit for the Lord that will never be returning, because there will be nothing for him to return to.

“Did no one stop to think about why a swift would build a prison in such an enclosed valley? Nowhere to run, no space to truly use their abilities? Swifts like space. Wide, open spaces to run. So far from a Red village to witness the carnage and be scared into submission? Why would a prison that was meant to force Reds into submission be so far from them? They certainly didn’t try to make a secret of it, so why the impossible location? Did no one else think about how perfect a symbol this torture prison for Reds would be for the Scarlet Guard, or how convenient it was that its suddenly empty and ripe for the taking? Am I the only one with a brain in this whole operation?” There’s a note of panic in Evangeline’s voice. I finally look at her.

The dappled sunlight breaks across her face in a way that turns her silvery hair to gold, dark eyes lit from within. There are knives in her hands, and her armor has tightened around her form. We’re so close to the cliff overlooking the valley now, I can see open sky, and a distant spire, feel the breeze on my face.

“What are you saying?”

Evangeline looks at me like I’m stupid. I very well might be, to have gotten myself in this situation. _Not again, not again, not again._

“It’s too perfect. Too easy,” She lets me put the final piece in place for myself, narrowed eyes alight with intelligence and cunning.

“It’s a trap.”

Suddenly, there’s a vibration in the air, a screeching in my head. The worlds takes a sudden turn to the left. Evangeline and I both whir from each other at the sound, facing the edge of the forest. Faster than my eyes can follow, something whirls toward us, and then there’s a spike sticking out of Evangeline’s shoulder. A spray of silver blood hits my face like a fine fist.

It tastes like metal and rage and death.

“No shit it’s a trap,” For someone who just got impaled with a plastic spike, Evangeline’s voice holds a lot of sarcasm.

**

_Cal_

“What do you mean, she’s gone?” Ptolemus’ voice holds a thinly veiled threat in it, almost as menacing as the shifting of his armor. I can’t blame him; flames come to life in my hands, and I have to clench my fists to stop them from spreading across the room, across the world.

“Evangeline went with Mare. Snuck onto her plane as they were leaving for a mission, and they missed their check in,” Davidson’s voice is deceptively calm.

I am not.

My fists clench, nails digging half-moons into my palms. The flamemaking bracelet at my wrist clicks, flames dancing up my arms before vanishing in a puff of smoke.

She’s missing. In the Lakelands.

No help, no Shade at her back, no Kilorn to make sure she lives.

Mare is missing, probably in danger because no one attracts trouble like she does, and I am stuck here, weighed down by my choices.

Every instinct in my body screams at me to steal a plane, fly out right now. I feel pulled north, towards where Mare is. The heavy crown on my head keeps me rooted.

“My sister, the future queen of Norta, Princess of the Kingdom of the Rift, is missing on a mission for your insurgency, and you’re unconcerned?” I can see the clench of Ptolemus’ jaw, and it doesn’t bode well.

Not that I have any room to speak. There’s sweat beading on the foreheads of everyone in the conference room, and I know it’s because of me. Don’t care enough to dial it in, though. I have bigger things to worry about.

“You said they missed their check in? What mission was it? Why weren’t we informed?” I spit out between clenched teeth.

“You weren’t informed because you’re a liability where Mare Barrow is concerned. And, we are under no obligation to share all of our operations with either of you,” Farley says, sweeping into the room, bringing the scent of rain with her. Part of me fractures at the smell. There’s blood spattered over her uniform, both Red and Silver.

My grandmother rises from her chair next to me.

“This is the rightful king of Norta, mind your manners. What is going on?” She steps closer to me, but doesn’t touch me. Smart. I’m burning too hot not to burn her right now.

(The smell of rain just makes the images of flashing skin and mud and _heat_ and small hands all the harder to ignore.)

“What’s going on is that I sent Mare Barrow to destroy a deserted Red prison in the Lakelands, based on intel from previously reliable scouts, and Evangeline Samos, who is almost as bad as Mare is at causing trouble, snuck on the mission. That, is not on me, that’s definitely on you,” Farley pauses to point at Ptolemus Samos, ignoring the bristling he does in response, before continuing. “Though it’s probably a good thing she’s there now. Just got word back from those in the area. They were ambushed. Lakeland and Nortan guards have the whole valley where the prison was cut off. No one in or out. Reports of unusual storms in the area.”

_Mare._

(I can still hear her soft sighs, feels her fingers scrabbling for purchase against my back, tiny sparks setting my spine alive with feeling. I can hear her screams, feel her nightmares.)

The world shatters in a blur of red glass, then is reconstructed just as fast.

“Is Maven there?” I try to think about this logically.

“Don’t know,” Farley says, only now seeming to notice that there’s blood across her outfit, picking at it with a detached fascination.

“Are you alright, General Farley?” Davidson asks, a look of panic on his face at the prospect of losing both the Lightning Girl and the Samos Princess in one day.

“Oh, found the reason for the bad intel. A whisper got to a Red scout, a Silver mole tried to kill the man before we could get anything out of him,” Farley shrugs, looking unconcerned with herself and the evidence of carnage spread across her clothes.

Dimly, I notice the smell of burning plastic. My self-control is rapidly deteriorating.

_Is this the part where I ask you to choose me?_

“So we don’t know if Maven is there. Do we know anything about the nature of the ambush? Are either of them hurt? How do we get them back?”

Farley lowers a stare at me, eyes unblinking and unfocused.

“We do nothing. There’s nothing we can do. Evangeline and Mare aren’t normal. They’re forces of nature, and they’re the only ones who can get themselves out of this.”

“We’re not leaving my sister out there!” Ptolemus’ armor is shaking on him from the rage unfolding inside of him. I feel it reflected in me, too. I see the world through a lens of flames and lightning.

“What do you plan to do, Prince Samos?” Farley’s voice drips condescension. But I see the tightness in her shoulders, the slight tremble of her fingers as she flicks a fleck of dried blood off her uniform.

“I will tear the world apart to get my sister back,” Ptolemus snarls, stalking from the room, his chair crunching to a small ball of twisted metal behind him.

Farley looks to me, studying my face, the veins standing out on my arms, the crown my grandmother had produced nestled in my hair. I try to let my eyes say what I can’t.

_I will burn the world down to get her back._

_I will burn the world down._

*

_Mare_

By the time I’ve registered what just happened, Evangeline has already taken the head of the telky who managed to injure her. My lightning follows, tracing a glowing path from convulsing body to convulsing body of the men that had appeared from the cliff, but not fast enough to avoid the spike headed my way. The last solider, moving too fast for me to follow, launches it at me with unerring accuracy. I can’t stop them and stop it at the same time. I make a choice.

A searing pain crosses my face, my ear.

Their bodies are nothing but smoking ruins, and I’m dimly aware of how close I just came to having a plastic spike inside my brain.

(Maybe the thought doesn’t scare me as much as it used to.)

“That can’t be all of them. We’re more important than a few minor soldiers.” If it wasn’t for the pain evident in Evangeline’s voice, I would have thought she was offended at the force sent to apprehend us.

Breathing heavily, I turn slightly to look at her.

She does not look well. Her face is pale, silver blood staining her black armor. The plastic spike, clear and obviously sharp, sticks 5 inches out of her left shoulder, dangerously close to where her heart should be.

I can see the wheels in her mind turning, and know what she’s about to do as she starts to do it.

“Don’t take it-“

Before I even finish my sentence, her slim fingers wrap around the base of the spike, and yank. An even bigger spurt of silver blood hits my face this time. I feel it mix with the red blood racing down my cheeks and neck. Without a pause, her armor readjusts itself, slower than usual, and covers the hole in her body. Her face is paler than usual, dark eyes stark against the paleness of her skin and hair, the dark of her armor.

“Do you have a death wish?” I ask, incredulous, as she hauls herself to her feet. The pain of the spike hasn’t hit yet, but I know that I may have less of my left earlobe than I once did, not to mention a deep cut along my left cheekbone.

“No more than you do,” Evangeline mutters as she looks at the lightning weaving itself around my body, setting us both awash in purple light, the red rivers running down my face, “but I need my arm for whatever is coming. When was the pilot coming back for us?”

There’s a crash in the bushes next to us, and I’ve lit it up before the soldier even emerges. Nothing else follows him. My grip on control is tenuous.

A test, then. To see if either of us were still dangerous.

More would follow.

“One hour. Around the same point that they dropped us off at. Too dangerous to stay in the area while I worked,” I spit out, scanning the area around us.

“This may be the worst place to have a fight. They’ll just wait and smoke us out. Wait for a whisper, or for Maven himself, with or without his bride,” Evangeline’s voice is strained as she presses her hand to her chest.

“I know,” I reply tersely, too alarmed at the quiet that has taken over the world. Not a bird, not a breeze, not a branch cracking in the distance.

“We can’t take them all on by ourselves. Not injured.”

“I know,” I snarl. Evangeline and I may be in a league of our own, but it’s a small league. Two people can’t win against an army.

“We need a plan. We can’t stay here, and wait for a pilot that’s more likely to be blasted out of the sky than actually retrieve us.”

I look back towards the edge of the forest, free of live bodies. Now, it’s just smoking corpses, and one head far from its body, courtesy of Evangeline.

Lessons echo in my head. Ella’s voice, Cal’s voice, Kilorn’s voice, Shade’s voice, Farley’s voice.

  _I will not die here. Maven will not take my freedom again._

Instinctively, I reach out with my powers, feeling every drop of electricity within the valley. As I brush the prison in the distance, a spark feels familiar, brings back memories of sunlight and tinted windows.

A plan half forms in my head. Crazy and impulsive, and maybe just stupid enough to work.

Sounds emerge from the woods around us. Our moment of rest is over. They’re coming, now, in full force.

“Can you fight?” I ask Evangeline.

A feral smile works its way across her sharp and beautiful face, teeth bared.

“I can fight,” she confirms, “and I can kill.”

“Even better. Follow me.” My face feels as untamed as hers looks.

Soldiers cross into view, and I let myself become the storm.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> im on tumblr: lightningandfireinmybones.tumblr.com
> 
> also i like comments
> 
> thanks for reading


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> sorry it took so long
> 
> starting to earn that rating now

_Mare_

I know nothing but the flash of electricity, the smell of iron sharp on the air. Steel soars past me, bodies become ruin, and I survive, same as I always have.

(The thought of not surviving isn’t as motivating as it used to be. Every movement, every action I take to survive, chafes against a part of me that is still raw and burnt and not healing.)

This battle feels sharply different from the battle at Corvium.

Evangeline still has my back. I’m still fighting Silvers, fighting for a life where there isn’t a system of suffering. I’m still weaving a web of purple, a living breathing electric current. People still die at my feet. I’m still painted in silver blood.

But there’s no current of heat, no familiar broad form fighting with grace and agility as familiar to me as my own heartbeat. There’s no pounding rain, no knowledge that my heart is fighting with me, close enough to reach out to.

Only desperation, metal in my mouth, lightning in my veins, regret and despair burning the back of my throat. The feeling of a lost limb dragging my mind through the muddy field of emotions.

Every step towards that cliff’s edge is earned with blood, sweat, and tears.

Rain pounds me, only to be stopped, and replaced with wind. Stoneskins turn to a smoking mass. Ice coats my limbs, only to be melted with purple sparks. Every strike gets countered, every wound repaid with their lives.

Nothing is real except for the throbbing of my own determination not to enter another cage, to feel hot arms around me again, to see the flash of Gisa’s hair, see a world made equal.

Next to me, Evangeline cleaves a telky woman clean in half, showering both of us with the silver blood of her body. It joins the stained red of my own blood, and the overwhelming silver blood painting me.

(It’s never enough, but too much.)

I swallow my disgust with a cleaving bolt of my own. A strongarm doesn’t gain another inch towards us.

This is war and slaughter and desperation, a kind of killing born of torn minds and broken spirits.

A stoneskin got in a punch to my ribs before his heart stopped beating, and every breath hurts. Part of me thinks that some of the scars on my back, courtesy of the sounder, might have torn open.

Something has shifted since the last time Maven tried to get me back. The gloves are off. These soldiers feel meaner, harsher, more desperate. Not to kill, maybe not yet, but to maim. To injure, to hurt me as Maven thinks I have hurt him. To bring me back as only a fraction of what I am.

We gain a few more feet towards the edge of the cliff, to what I’m hoping will save us.

“What’s the plan when we get there?” Evangeline screams at me, voice hard and layered with pain and exertion and exhaustion. Sparing a glance her way, I note the silver blood still wet and shining on her armor, the pallor of her face. She’s hanging on by a thread. It may be a steel thread, but it’s still a thread.

I weave a web of purple sparks and lightning around us, building a cage of living fury and desperation. The drain is immense, my limbs almost collapsing with the web I’m weaving. It buys us a moment of peace, like an eye of a storm, crackling electricity keeping us alive and safe, if only for a moment longer. It’s enough for me to grunt out my plan to Evangeline.

“Are you fucking crazy?” Evangeline says, armor shifting unevenly around her, eyes round as saucers,

“Probably,” I respond, web dying out around us. She doesn’t have a chance to respond, eyes scanning the world around us. She’s just as bloody as I am.

I almost fall to my knees as it stops spinning, my own hurricane of electricity and anger sizzling to a few sparks.

But it was enough. We have a clear shot to the edge of the cliff.

(That open space was ripe for the taking. I should have known it was too good to be true.)

We start moving through the space. I can feel the breeze of the open space, whipping across the tear in my cheek, the hole in my ear, flicking my blood off my skin. We’re almost to the edge when the world stops again, a voice haunting my nightmares and my dreams and my waking moments shattering anything left inside of me after this bloodshed echoing through the forest, unnaturally loud, supremely smooth and cold.

“You can’t escape this time, Mare.”

I can’t stop myself from whirling, turning to face the forest, every survival instinct my life was built on shattering in the face of all consuming rage, confusion, and something else I don’t want to name or think about.

“Don’t-“ Evangeline wheezes, grabbing for my arm, dark eyes alert with alarm and fury and something akin to concern. I shake off her weak grip with ease, a new fury and strength filling me.

Maven stands in the clearing we just fought our way through, clean and well groomed. His eyes are deep set in dark bruises, turning his blue eyes into chips of ice and cold, despite the flames whirling themselves around his arms. He looks taller, jaw more pronounced, shoulders a bit wider. For once, he’s not in his dress clothes, a strange black armor clasping his form with both elegance and menace.

(Every part of me wishes it was the other Calore standing in front of me. Every part of me aches at the choices that brought us to this point.)

Something inside of me bursts, past the dam I built inside myself. Ghost manacles grace my wrist, the ghost of silence slipping against my wrists. My heart skips a beat at the familiar face, the Calore features sparking reminders of old betrayals burning fresh. Sentinels crowd around him, but it’s just him and I in this clearing, every bit of ourselves exposed and raw and burning with curdled feelings.

I don’t take my eyes off of Maven when I speak to Evangeline.

“Keep with the plan. I’ll meet you there,” I murmur to her, rallying every bit of electricity I can to myself.

“Mare, don’t-“ Evangeline starts, voice breaking with pain I know she’s loathe to show in front of Maven, but he could care less about her. It’s him and me, finally coming to head in this clearing.

“You better be where you’re supposed to be,” I say to her behind me, bite and an unexpected concern coloring the words, my voice sounding foreign even to my own ears.

I don’t have time to hear her response before I blindly shove Evangeline Samos, future queen of Norta and one of the only people to accept the darker parts of me with a smile, off a cliff.

Maven’s lips quirk in a humorless smirk. He makes no move to have anyone try for Evangeline. But she’s not the real prize here, not to him.

I am.

“I see you stopped fucking my brother long enough to leave that base.”

My blood freezes at his words, then ignites again just as fast, rage racing through me with a fury I didn’t know I possessed. The nearest tree to me explodes, lightning shooting out of it. I don’t even feel myself losing control.

“Is that jealousy?” I don’t know where the words come from, where this complete disregard for sanity and safety comes from.

“As if I wouldn’t hear about you opening your legs for him,” Maven sneers, a crazed look burning in his eyes. There’s none of that boy who admitted he didn’t know his own mind to me there. Only the twisted and shattered man the boy has grown in to since I left him again, obsession burning just as hot as the fire guttering up his arms, a hot blue.

An insane urge to hurt him takes me. Hurt him so deeply he will never be the same. To dig in to those wounds, those scars I’ve carved up next to the ones his mother left.

“Just another thing Cal beat you to,” I reply, my brain screaming at me to explode, to run, to stop talking, to do anything but goad Maven with his brother. Talking about Cal feels like handling glass barehanded, small nicks and cuts stinging alongside the rage and memories what we’re talking about bring up.

(Even here, facing the person who wrecked me, I’m thinking about his brother, beads of sweat rolling down a toned chest, long eyelashes that aren’t my own brushing my skin, warm hands that grip too tight, burning away nightmares and inhibitions and shadows. Maven could never ruin me the way hearing his brother chose the crown over me did.)

Maven takes a step towards me, crossing that clearing with strides that didn’t use to be that powerful. A wall of flame, blue and bright and colder than I thought possible, rises around us, a circle to cage us in. Inside, it’s just him and I. The shadow of the flames dance across his face, illuminating the sharp edges and elegant lines.

Panic rises inside of me, forcing its way up my throat. I force it back down, force myself to stay still as he approaches me. His brand burns with every step.

( _Am I going to kill him?_ I can’t decide. Bronze eyes burning with hope swim in my head.)

Stopping right before he’s close enough to touch me, Maven makes the circle of fire surrounding us come in tighter, flames close enough to reach out and burn myself. But they’re not the comforting fire, the fire that makes my heart swell and my back straighten. No, this fire sends shivers racing down my spine, aching for the heat of someone else’s flame. He’s close enough to me that I can see the reflection of individual flames in his eyes. Purple sparks race around me, my body’s own instinct to protect me from him. I don’t even realize I’m doing it. I’m too lost, too far gone in this glorified king’s cage rabbit hole.

“You weren’t meant for him, Mare. It was supposed to be you and me, a Silver king and a Red queen, against the world. Each other’s firsts,” Maven says softly, a gentleness in his voice that makes me want to retch. His eyes seem to fade back into that soft boy I thought I had fallen in love with.

(Bronze eyes are seared into my mind. I didn’t know what love was then. Now I do, but I also know heartbreak too.)

“Don’t. I didn’t owe anything to you, or Cal, or anyone. I chose to do what, and who, I wanted,” I huff out, but I’m paralyzed. My sparks move faster around me, saving me when I can’t even save myself.

“But,” Maven starts, and that small kind spark, the boy who was the shadow to the flame, disappears, replaced with something worse, something rotten, “Then you went and fucked my brother like a common Red slut, and ruined everything. You let him put his hands on you like he deserved any part of you, of your smile, of your body, of your soul.”

I’m paralyzed, frozen to the spot by the honeyed and horrible words dripping from his mouth. Some small, distant part of my brain tells me to end this, to turn him inside out with the bite of lightning. But I can’t. The storm just keeps building up inside of me, electrocuting my heart like it hasn’t already been ripped out and burnt and turned to ashes. My brand burns hotter than I ever thought it could, like it’s being made new.

Maven has no idea how dangerous the ground he’s walking on is right now. A low screaming fills my ears. Bubbling under my skin is a storm of every heartbreak, every betrayal, every destructive impulse I’ve ever had. A storm that won’t just destroy him, but me too.

( _Is this the moment I lose my mind so completely no one will ever bring me back?_ )

“You’re mine, and I’m going to burn him right out of you,” Maven purrs, reaching for me, ignoring the sparks my skin is spitting out. I see the rubber gloves, feel his words reach my brain. Understand what he means.

Inside me, something snaps. Something I don’t think I’ll ever be able to put back together.

I explode.

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i am motivated by feedback to be honest
> 
> also taking opinions on smut in this story
> 
> thank


	4. Chapter 4

_Mare_

Everything is fuzzy, bathed in a sickly grey light. Flashes of blue, bronze, and black swim across my vision in time with the pounding behind my eyes. Everything hurts, but I don’t think I’m dead yet.   

I start off easy.

_One._ I’m alive.

(I can’t say I’m not disappointed. There would be a nice symmetry to us killing each other.)

_Two._ My earrings are still there.

(Except for the red one in a box in a room I didn’t think I would ever see again.)

_Three._ I’m moving quickly.

(Nice to know at least one part of my plan went right, never mind that I can’t remember how I got here.)

_Four._ Someone is stroking my hair.

(If I’m in a hell, it probably wouldn’t feel this nice.)

_Five._ There’s blood on my hands.

(When is there not?)

“Welcome back to the world,” a gentle voice intones above me.

With a jolt, everything sharpens out of the dreamy fog I’d been swimming through, and I crash back into reality. Purple sparks soar from my skin, before fizzling out in soft flashes of white. I struggle to sit up, suddenly acutely aware that my head is in someone’s lap and I don’t know where I am.

Large hands wrap around mine, swallowing the sparks I can’t stop.

“Mare.” Tyton’s voice. Tyton’s grey eyes. Tyton’s white hair. Tyton’s hands covering mine, containing the electricity I can’t.

My name sounds heavy, meaningful coming from his lips. In bits, pieces, I find myself again underneath the confusion and darkness.

“Is she going to fry us? I thought you said you could stop that,” Evangeline says disdainfully as I finally stop shaking and shedding sparks.

Tyton’s eyes don’t leave mine as he replies to the princess in the seat across from us.

“She’s fine, and you would do well to remember she saved your life.”

Evangeline sniffs pointedly, and I can hear her shifting in her seat, the grind and slide of metal loud in the interior of what I’m now realizing is an air jet.

“If I move my hands, will you be able to keep yourself in check?” Tyton asks quietly. There’s no judgement in his voice.

“I’m fine,” I croak out, the very state of my voice belying the lie in my words.

Still, he moves his hands from mine, and leans back, letting me take in what’s going on around me.

It’s easier to start now that I’ve established this isn’t another cage. This air jet is small, holding just a few, the interior hazy with smoke I’m coming to realize is emanating from me.

I’m still bleeding, a lazy drip across my neck alerting me to the dull, throbbing pain from where I think my ear used to be. My necks burns, I burn all over. I feel patchy, fake, glued together. With a sinking suspicion, I fold my hands in my lap, not needing that question answered right now.

My eyes blink slowly, my lashes feeling heavier than they ever have. Evangeline sits across from me, still in her bloodstained armor, silver painted across her face, shoulder tended to by a midnight skinned healer. Her eyes follow my movements, and she looks ready to leap into action if Tyton’s words ring false and I steal the electricity running through this plane. Her brother sits stiffly next to her, wearing the same matte black armor, painted with minimally less blood than his sister. If a spark or two runs down my arms at the sight of the man that killed my brother, no one can blame me. His dark eyes following the purple glow into the darkness shows me he knows exactly what I’m thinking.

The pilot, lithe and small a few feet away, is silent as she pilots us into the night ahead.

(Even now, I still wish it was him.)

Tyton sits next to me, wearing his uniform, sharp jaw clenched as he watches me. Even in the darkness, I can make out the constellations of freckles spilt across his cheeks through speckles of silver blood. He eyes me warily, but there’s a warmth in his gaze I wasn’t expecting. Something that almost looks like relief peeks through his impassive expression.

“How did I get here?” My voice isn’t stronger than it was before.

I don’t miss the way Evangeline and Ptolemus exchange a look.

“Samos and I came to find you and Evangeline after the trap was discovered,” Tyton begins, voice reminding me of syrup, dark and smooth.

“But you were nowhere to be found. We looked for you, against my better judgement, mind you, until you wandered into the clearing we were in, smoking and bloody, like a goddamn ghost before collapsing on us. Only Tyton could touch you, you were all loose electricity and sparking like a damn wire. What the hell happened, Mare? Where is Maven? How did you get away?” Evangeline snaps, losing patience quickly with Tyton’s more cautious approach.

_You’re mine, and I’m going to burn him right out of you._

The burning on my body intensifies. In my head, a scream is building, a cacophony of hurt and rage and pain and lightning.

How did I get away? I remember exploding, and pain, and lightning, and fire, and wishing I was dead before being certain I was dead.

Yet here I am.

I feel like I’m on fire. Not the good kind of the fire, the kind that reminds me I can still feel pleasure in the pain, the kind that sets my nerves racing, my heart pounding, my back arching.

This fire suffocates. This fire robs me of my will, my body, my choices. I am nothing more than a pawn in this fire, a toy to be used and abused and discarded at will.

I see a broken man, a shattered piece of the broken boy I loved, reaching for my, the heat overwhelming. Purple flashes, a low screaming I’m pretty sure is mine. I feel his touch, his heat, so different from the heat his brother ignites. Pain, unlike any I have felt before.

I’m breaking all over again, a storm of my own undoing.

_I’m going to burn him right out of you._

In hindsight, it’s not really that surprising that I passed out again.

_Cal_

“Will you stop pacing? You’re making me anxious,” Farley snaps from her place against the wall of the Command room, a forced casualness in her slouch.

I just scowl at her, letting the temperature in the room rise a few degrees. Ever the General, she just rolls her eyes, letting her head fall back against the bare beige wall.

“We’re all anxious, stop pretending like you’re the only one who cares, Cal,” Cameron doesn’t even attempt civility, twirling a curl between her long fingers.

Just barely keeping the growl inside, I can’t contain the flame that crawls up my arm, the heat familiar and welcoming. I am in hell, torn between two worlds.

(She can’t be dead. There’s no way she can be dead.)

“Cal,” my grandmother murmurs, taking a step closer to me than anyone else has dared since we learned Ptolemus, Tyton, and Wren had seized an air jet and made for the Lakelands to retrieve two of our most valuable players. Since Maven had been confirmed in that country, too close, too far away, too far gone.

I shake off her reaching hand, letting myself feel every regret, every choice I’ve made that has brought me to this point.

(Maybe he’s dead. Maybe they’re both dead. Maybe I am alone with the crown after all.)

Davidson is the only one of us who looks truly relaxed here, reading through field reports even as we wait for word about how the rest of this war is going to play out.

(Waiting for word about whether my heart is gone or not.)

To avoid drowning in the memories, the long gone feeling of being home, of being safe and wanted in such small arms, I run through the schematics of my cycle in my head, blocking out the low murmuring in the room, the anxious ticks, the nervous glances.

_Mare, Mare, Mare, Mare._ I can’t remember the before, and I can’t imagine an after.

A winded Kilorn leaps through the doorway, his long legs almost quaking beneath him.

“They’re landing! It doesn’t sound-“

He doesn’t even get to finish his message before I’m rushing past him, finally giving in to the anxiety wrecking my self-control. What do I even have to fight for if both of them are gone?

The hallways melt away beneath me. I’m dimly aware of people following me, the sounds of pursuit as the tarmac gets closer and closer.

As she gets closer and closer.

(Will she still be the same? You can only get so close to Maven before he eats you alive. I would know.)

I pull up to a stop as I spot the air jet preparing to land. It’s shaking, like its containing more than it was meant for. No one could have planned for her.

Cameron and Kilorn pull up next to me, the only ones even close to keeping up with me. Their breath catches as they notice the same thing I did, the unnatural tilt to the jet as it finally touches down on the pavement. The dark skies aren’t enough to hide the worry clouding their features. I can only imagine how I look right now.

Steeling myself, I try to let the weight of the crown anchor me down, keep me in place when all I want to do is run to the opening door, run to the only person I want right now. I strain my eyes, everything falling away as the first form takes shape of the plane.

I take a step forward, drawn in.

Evangeline emerges, leaning heavily on her brother, both painted in silver blood. But there’s red mixed in too, setting my nerves on fire all over again. I’m aware of the rising temperature around me; I just don’t care. Her dark eyes flick to me, and she shakes her head minutely, looking so tired. Is that a glimpse of pity, of sadness, of humanity in Evangeline’s eyes?

Then, I see her. And I understand the look Evangeline sent me. She was trying to warn me.

Her body is limp, blood dripping off her prone form in Tyton’s arms, purple sparks exploding off of her body the only sign of life. The tall man is carrying her bridal style, the purple sparks being consumed by white sparks before they can hurt anyone. Parts of her clothes are charred off, leaving glimpses of the skin burnt in the shape of handprints beneath. Even Tyton’s mask has slipped, revealing the emotions beneath, emotions I don’t want to see or face.

My world is spinning out of control, not even the crown enough to weigh me down as I see the damage he has brought to her body. There isn’t enough oxygen in the world to fuel the fire inside of me. I take a step forward, only to have Davidson’s hand, glowing a soft blue, rest upon my arm.

“You can’t touch her. Her body is in survival mode. She’ll kill you if you do. Only another electricon can,” he murmurs to me, drawn face lit up by sparks as Tyton passes us, Mare looking like a corpse gently cradled to his chest.

“Maven was there. He did something to her,” Evangeline is pale, scared, pissed off when she stops next to me. It looks like her brother is the only thing holding her up, “and I don’t think the Lightning Girl is going to be able to shake this one off.”

_Mare, Maven, Mare, Mine._

My world is shattering all over again, igniting.

Is this rage, sorrow, want, or regret?

I can’t tell.

I can only watch the woman I love be held by another man as her scarlet blood splatters against the floor beneath his boots, destroyed by the brother I can’t help but love.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> lol it's been almost a year since I updated but I read War Storm and it fucked me up so here we are
> 
> please review, I need feedback to stay motivated
> 
> also still taking input on whether we want smut here or nah
> 
> find me on tumblr at lightningandfireinmybones.tumblr.com

**Author's Note:**

> i love feedback and am needy
> 
> find me on tumblr: lightningandfireinmybones.tumblr.com


End file.
